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ZorbaTHut  2yr ago (text post)   35553 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 19, 2022

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The sheer extent of social and economic destruction all around the Western world caused by long-term lockdowns will probably remain incalculable for years to come, provided that anyone even dares to calculate it. Will anyone have the courage to hold the feet of avocado toast people to the fire for what they have supported?

I listen to the BBC's daily news podcast -- which could be the mouthpiece of the World Avocado Toast Forum -- and at some point in the last week or so there was a report about how some third-world region's economy had been devastated "by COVID." It's not the first time I've heard it put like this, and it always makes me vomit in my mouth a little: attributing the mal effects of oppressive lockdown regimes to the disease rather than the politicians/bureaucracies who chose against other options. This is going to be the narrative going forward.

From the old place:

Single-cause fallacy

Media articles are quick to describe negative second-order side effects as having been caused "by the pandemic", when the effects in question clearly have no causal relationship to the Covid-19 virus whatsoever and are exclusively caused by the measures instated in reaction to the virus (including lockdowns). [By way of analogy, it would be very misleading to claim that cancer causes baldness. Chemotherapy causes baldness, and chemotherapy is used in response to cancer, but it is not the cancer itself which causes the baldness.] This is an abdication of responsibility, as it tacitly assumes that governments had no choice but to instate lockdowns, restrictions and other measures in response to the virus - when in fact they did have a choice, and the policy decisions they actually made should be expected to pass a cost-benefit analysis, just the same as every other government policy.

Note that if governments can't be held to account for the negative effects of lockdowns/restrictions because their hands were forced, this obviously implies that they can't take credit for the benefits of these policies either.

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